Vampires are dark mysterious creatures of the night — and
their biggest weakness isn't sunlight or wooden stakes, it's straight-up
comedy. Over the years, people have tried many times to create vampire spoofs,
culminating in this week's epic flop Vampire
Academy. Here are the 10 most tragic vampire comedies ever made.

Top image: Vampires Suck

To be sure, a few vampire comedies have prospered — Love at First Bite scored a measure of
success in the late 1970s. The original Buffy
the Vampire Slayer movie was basically a straight-up comedy, and it did
well enough that they greenlit a somewhat more serious TV show. Hotel Transylvania is a light-hearted
cartoon about monsters, with a vampire main character. But for the most part,
vampire comedies have failed both critically and commercially. See for
yourself:

2) Vamp (1986) — Grace Jones is wasted in this comedy prototype of From Dusk 'Til Dawn about clueless kids visiting a vampire stripper bar. The mid-1980s also gave us the underwhelming Once Bitten and My Best Friend is a Vampire.

3) Vampire's Kiss
(1989) — This movie fizzled at the box office, but also signaled the beginning of Nic Cage's slide into bizarre scenery-chewing.

4) Rockula (1990) — our favorite guilty pleasure, this movie made about 50 cents at the box office. It does have Toni Basil, Bo Diddley and Thomas Dolby, plus a lot of "Rapping Vampire" scenes

5) Dracula: Dead and
Loving It (1995) — Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielsen collaborate for one of the most reviled horror comedies of all time.

6) Vampire in
Brooklyn (1995) — Wes Craven and Eddie Murphy team up for a vampire comedy that's most often described as "tedious"

7) Lesbian Vampire
Killers (2009) — a bunch of British TV stars try their luck on the big screen with a "laddy" movie that totally fails to live up to its awesomely trashy title

8) Transylmania
(2009) — this spoof about college students visiting Romania has the coveted 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Most reviews mention that it makes the Scary Movie franchise look brilliant by comparison.

9) Vampires Suck
(2010) — and then there's the film from two of the actual Scary Movie makers. By all accounts, this Twilight spoof is like shooting fish in a barrel... and missing.

10) Dark Shadows
(2012) - Tim Burton and Johnny Depp clearly want to pay homage to the classic soap opera while also poking fun at the whole idea of an ageless vampire in the 1970s — but the humor falls horribly flat.